The Mars rover Curiosity drilled into the Martian
surface for the first time as part of an effort to learn if the planet
most like Earth in the solar system ever had conditions to support
microbial life.Pictures beamed back to Earth on Saturday showed a hole
about 1.6 cm wide and 6.4 cm deep in a patch of fine-grained sedimentary
bedrock that appears to have been in contact with water.The drilling,
which took place on Friday, produced a small pile of powder that will be
fed into two onboard laboratory instruments to determine the rock's
chemical makeup.The drill is the last of the rover's 10 science
instruments to be tested.
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